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The beginnings and the ends of BioArtSuzanne Anker, Feature

Pioneering bio artist and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the Schoolof Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City Suzanne Anker describes somerecent directions of bio art in its "remapping, recombining andreorienting" of life.

Since the late 1980s a significant number of artists have begun working with biologicallyrelated concepts and materials. Of course the infusion of biology into the visual arts is notnew. For writer and theorist Jack Burnham a shift in visual art took place in the late 1960s,not because of Arthur Danto's proclamation that art was over, but because the visual artsbegan to derive substitute methodologies for the creation of artworks: earth works, systemstheory and real-time media became fresh working tools. As early as 1969, in Beyond ModernSculpture, Burnham sees the integration of "men and machines into optimally functioning

systems as tantamount to creating synthetic organisms"1, a concept which provokes theimagination of artists, designers and scientists of today.

Synthetic biology and its attendant molecular technologies transform matter into neverbefore existing combinations. What is novel is the adaptation and exploitation of biologicallygenerated art that harnesses the advancing developments in technical apparatus, molecularprimers, and laboratory procedures to make visible or statistically believable what has neverbeen accounted for before.

Beginning with a working definition of bio art, a contested term in and of itself 2, three distinctyet sometimes overlapping sub-categories emerge from the genre. These sub-genres takeinto consideration allied practices necessary to transform matter on a molecular level:

Imagery garnered through methods such as MRI, atomic force microscopy, electrophoresis,

gene sequencing and PCR technologies3. Images of chromosomes, body scans, genotypicand phenotypic variations, and laboratory-fabricated animals enter the domain of image-making. They can be found in painting, sculpture, photography, video, music and theatre.

The incorporation of 3D computer modelling software, artificial life, robotics, biodegradablescaffolding and an interest in emergent theories of life as subject matter for new mediainstallations, rapid prototype sculpture and algorithmic codes.

The inclusion of wet laboratory practices such as tissue engineering, the cloning of animaland plant cells, transgenic microorganisms and ecological investigations. Artists now employliving matter as their medium.

Summoning awareness of the political, economic and social consequences of altering life isof particular importance to bio art. From relational aesthetics to performance art, from theinstitutional critique to new media installations, from photographic realities to manipulatedones, bio art is supported across myriad formats. Scientific paraphernalia, biologicalprocesses, body fluids and serums support this evolving body of work. Dead or live animals,plants, and microorganisms often appear in art installations. It is common to see charts,sensors, computer chips and naked bodies as well. As a fusion of art and science, designand architecture, various parameters can be employed to evaluate bio art, based on a slidingscale of observations in support of the following end points:

Can a work of bio art be judged on the difficulty of the biological processes being employed?

Are bio artists no more than amateur scientists?

Can the philosophical questions bio art raises be embedded in visual art scenarios? Or, putanother way, do the aesthetic principles of design arrive to save the day in the presentationof hand-blown glass, lab coats as costumes, an array of plants and horticultural apparatus,robotic systems and scripted dialogues?

Can bio art be separated from bio design or speculative design? What is the role of utility inthese manifestations?

When scientific facts are falsified by bio artists how does that affect (or not affect) theresultant work of art?

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The beginnings and the ends of Bio Art - Bio Art: Life in the Anthropocene - Artlink Magazine

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What terms are employed in bio art and how are they subsequently scrutinised inphilosophical discourse concerning life and life forms?

Bio artists and designers often engage in collaborative processes, sharing ideas, methodsand perspectives. Often enough, teams combine scientists, visual artists, designers,computer software specialists, photographers, dancers, actors, philosophers, physicians,technicians, anthropologists and writers. There are many cases of successful collaborativeexperiences. Additionally, this status of unorthodox practice can garner results throughchance and achieve recognition outside of traditional scientific methods.

The question of working with life as a medium is a complex one. Through mixing andmatching, cutting and pasting, freezing and heating, the cell has become a domain ofdynamic interactions. Along with procedural knowledge, a host of concepts have alsomigrated into bio art parlance such as transgenic art and semi-living and other terms such asvictimless leather, in-vitro meat. As far as transgenic art is concerned, does it mean anytransgenic organism is potentially a work of art?

How is semi-living defined? Characteristics of life include: metabolism, reactions to stimuli,growth and an ability to reproduce. Are freshly killed cow’s cells an example of semi-living? Aperson in a coma? Can they be considered alive if they are hooked up with an externalapparatus? Is this a form of assisted living? Cultured cells need to be externally fed andcomatose patients require a machine to continue their physical existence. There is of courseno such thing as victimless leather or vegetarian in-vitro meat since animal by-products arethe necessary foodstuff to keep cells alive. What do we mean by such concepts and why dothey continue to be bandied around without being examined?

Microorganisms have become significant material sources for artists, designers andscientists. Bacteria has become a prime ingredient in photography, fashion design andsynthetic biology. Alexander Fleming, the father of penicillin, was an early practitioner ofemploying microbes to create pictures. Using microbes that were differentiated by colour,Fleming was able to have his various microbes 'bloom’ at the same time, thus portraying arich palette of living organisms in a Petrie dish. Fleming, it may be argued, is the father of bioart. As synthetic biology re-engineers DNA, creating entities that are not part of the naturalorder, a host of other consumables comes to market such as genetically altered malemosquitoes which render their offspring non-viable when mating with ‘wild type’ females. In asense these are living machines. Many other experimental products are being explored byartists such as Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Christina Agapakis and Sissel Tolaas.

BioCouture is yet another offshoot of the growing application of bio art. Donna Franklin andGary Cass have invented dresses made from cellulose generated by bacteria from red wine.Suzanne Lee composes ‘growing’ textiles produced by sugar, tea and bacteria to fashionjackets and kimonos. Sonja Baumel employs genetic data as the source of her designs. PiaInterlandi creates ‘corpse couture’ for the deceased, in which the fibres are intended to aid indecomposition. Anna Dumitriu works with bacteria as communicating devices whose colourchanges when they receive messages from one another. Whereas bio art does not looktowards industry or economic models, bio design is intricately connected to productdevelopment. Looms, weaving and pattern making are changing to include alternatebiological models.

Bio art questions the limits of the human body and its remaking and explores the implicationsof altering nature. In some cases, bio artists base their work on a critique of science.Although there are alliances between bio art and bio design, there are also manydifferences. Scientists and designers work in teams where all contributors areacknowledged. What remains to be seen are the ethical issues involved in these practices,as synthetic biology, a form of genetic engineering, becomes more popular. The innovationsreflected here are projections of the future, continually remapping, recombining andreorienting what is already extant.

1 Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technologyon the Sculpture of this Century, George Brazilier, 1969, p. 54.

2 See Bio Art entry in Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, 2007-2014.

3 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technology used for amplifying DNAsequences.

Suzanne Anker is a pioneering bio artist and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the Schoolof Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. She is a lead instructor in the Bio Art Lab at SVA.

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